funny (if not necessarily "passive-aggressive") notes from pissed-off people

She’s mine. All mine!

A certain supervisor thought his assistant, Sandra, was attracting too much idle chatter from other people in the office, so he made this framed notice for her desk. (Because that’s not creepy at all.)

Has he actually spoken to Sandra about her behavior? If she tries to do her job and people just don’t respect her enough to keep from distracting her, that’s one thing. If he just silently seethed every time he heard her speaking with someone until he got this notice framed without comment, that’s quite another!

I dunno, man. Even if he has spoken to Sandra about her chattiness, I think putting up this sign is still an act of a total creeper. If her talking is really that much of a problem, discipline her or fire her. Don’t frame a creepy sign about how no one but you is allowed to talk to her. Otherwise, you’re sending out a signal that you’re a weirdo who keeps her around for other reasons… … …

Yeah, the sign is too much and totally creepy. Boss needs to take this up personally with Sandra and the worst offenders if this is creating a productivity problem or creating an unprofessional environment. If the problem continues, fire the offenders.

Also, it would be frequently necessary to speak to the boss’ assitant in work related matters to do things like schedule meetings. I doubt the boss has an issue with such productive talk, but doesn’t discriminate between work related chatter and personal chatter on his sign.

I think it would have been more productive for Sandra to make the conversations boring or self-centered. There’s a guy here who can’t help but turn every conversation into a celebration of his achievements and superiority. Trust me, no one seeks him out for small talk.

My boss will actively shoo people away from my desk because he likes me and he knows that I hate when people camp out in my space. He comes out of it looking like the bad buy but really he is being a very good boss to me.

I feel for Sandra. I was an admin assistant at a construction company once. I was one of two women on staff and the only woman under fifty. I was told explicitly that no one was allowed to talk to me unless it was directly related to work, and all the men who worked there were told not to speak to me. It was a very lonely existence.

I used to supervise lifeguards, who despite wearing hideous baggy red uniforms and fanny packs, tend to field a ton of sexual harassment.

It’s fairly easy to have a little meeting with each new hire to say, “These are tactics you can use to avoid being hit on, these are tactics you can use to discourage someone who is hitting on you, these are tactics you can use when you feel threatened by someone’s advances, and this is how you report it.” We reinforced it at every staff meeting and would do follow-ups in private if necessary, to help empower the staff to stick up for themselves.

Telling someone that he/she is to be isolated as a solution is just wrong.

Personally I’d take the isolation, since having to deal with come-ons and innuendos every day is exhausting. I’ve told the boys (they don’t get to be called men) in no uncertain terms that their “jokes” about “who gets me first” are not funny and on top of it I am married and completely unavailable (not to mention all the OTHER “jokes” about blowjobs and the like). And the behavior only continues.
Standing up to workplace harassment only goes as far as the boss is willing to go. If the boss doesn’t plan to discipline those stepping out of line, then there’s only so far you can go without basically shooting yourself in the foot and maybe losing your job over “not being able to take a joke”

In the isolation case, it seems the boss is either lazy, or realizes that it’s easier to separate you than fire half his entire work crew over harassment issues.

Not having a boss/HR to act on blatant harrassment is bad, too. But Thou Shalt Not Speak To The Young Pretty One isn’t the answer. That’s insulting to the younger woman (for assuming she can’t handle it), the older woman (for assuming she isn’t desirable), and the men (for assuming they just can’t handle themselves). Plus it creates a very awkward work environment and can be very isolating for the “protected” one.

The problem isn’t even just harassment, really, it’s the fact that while they’re sitting there chatting, *neither* is doing the work they’re supposed to be.
As someone who ends up working his tail off while others stand around chatting either with each other or on their phones while there’s *plenty* of actual work that needs to be done, I know the feeling.

Elf, yeah I guess it’s insulting to do it without consulting original poster first. Boss probably knows what his own men are like though – whether they’re upstanding gentlemen or low-down harassers. And the boss doesn’t have to assume whether the older lady is “desirable” or not – frankly, if this is a harassment issue it’s plain by whether or not she is already harassed. If she isn’t, then…she’s not attractive enough anymore to warrant isolation. Cut and dry.

Regardless of whether I would’ve taken isolation in a heartbeat, it’s obvious it wasn’t preferable for original poster. Though, maybe she would have changed her mind in a month haha

What’s so bad about isolation? If it were acceptable at my old work I’d have placed a sign around my neck saying “Don’t fucking talk to me” but instead had to deal with increasingly worse sexual harassment until I quit. Honestly I’d be happy in solitary confinement the rest of my life, there is no correct way to deal with people.

While I agree with your points, Elf, in theory, and while your former work situation sounds horribly lonely, Original Poster, I think a couple of commenters above made important points: (1)the restriction was no doubt based on the boss’s prior experience with how his construction workers interact with female A.A.s, and (2) it was at least as much about keeping productivity up as it was about preventing harassment. Men who work on construction crews generally do not have a work history that has drilled ‘dos’ and ‘don’ts’ of working with the opposite gender into them, so any woman of moderate attractiveness (however the men define it age-wise, etc.) would have her work cut out for her in trying to handle the truckload of subtle hanging-around-gabbing to outright, suggestive proposals that would come her way. It’s all well and good to say that any woman worth her salt COULD handle all of these advances deftly, without taking away from her work time & ability to concentrate & workplace sense of wellbeing, and that an injunction against conversing with the work crews wasn’t necessary, but, jeez, the thought of trying to rebuff persistent flirters day-in, day-out just sounds exhausting to the point that working ‘in isolation’ just might be preferable.

(Again: perfect world, construction boss is ‘enlightened’ & skilled at training rotating crews of men of varied socioeconomic, cultural, language backgrounds in non-harassing treatment of Admin.Assistants, works with Admin.Assistants to put policies in place that promote friendly intrastaff interactions w/o time-wasting, etc., etc., but we all know how often ‘perfect’ happens!)

Nothing is wrong with self-imposed isolation, or having a workplace culture that discourages chit-chat. I’m fond of headphones to isolate myself, and I love to be left to my own devices to complete an assignment, so I can understand the appeal. But there is something wrong with creating a set of rules that delibertly isolates one person, regardless of whether it is for her “protection” or not. I think if you ended up with such externally-imposed isolation, just about anyone would find it lonely and awkward. If the situation is that bad, the boss/HR really needs to take a direct hand in stopping sexual harrassment. That’s not “perfect”, that’s common sense.

It’s like when you’re stuck at home for some reason (snowbound, leg broken, car’s in the shop, whatever). You may prefer to stay home and choose that often, but when you’re *forced* to do so it doesn’t take long for a little cabin fever to creep in.

Oh, I fully agree that “there is something wrong with creating a set of rules that delibertly isolates one person, regardless of whether it is for her “protection” or not”; instead of my long comment I should have just said that–given a situation in which the boss/HR just ISN”T going to do a damned thing to ensure a respectful & productive work environment–I’m not sure that the ‘freedom’ to fend off a constant stream of advances would make ME happier than isolation. (The answer to this type of work environ. for me would have to be staying in that job for as little time as possible, as it sounds like the OP did.)

Boss doesn’t realize that talking to Sandra makes her more valuable. Not only does she know everything that’s going on, she helps make up for how disliked he is. He also doesn’t realize that using the passive voice makes him sound weaker than they already think he is.

I get where the notewriter is coming from, I have some obscenely chatty coworkers and I can’t imagine if they were doing that instead of doing a job I paid them to help me do. But being a massively creepy douche for a decent reason is still being a massively creepy douche.

Leaving confusing notes–is this some newfangled supervisory technique? I have no idea what exactly this note is telling me to do. “Don’t chat up Sandra” would be clearer … … … but still inappropriate and ineffective.

I feel for Sandra. I have about 40 coworkers, and many of them like to stop by for a chat every day. The problem is, while each individual coworker may only spend a few minutes at my desk catching up, multiply that by 5 or 10 times per day, and I look like the chatterbox. I’ve had a senior manager tell me politely that I should consider telling my coworkers to stop dropping by my desk so much. He said he knew I spent my day at my desk working, but it didn’t look well to the big boss to see people at my desk so often. I took his advice, and I’m glad I did. The drop-bys still happen, but less frequently. Since then, my boss has given me more responsibility and paid my tuition to advance my degree because my image has improved. Sandra is just probably being polite to a fault, and the boss doesn’t have the people skills to handle it directly. To Sandra’s credit, it seems her boss sees the coworkers more as an interruption than he sees Sandra as a chatterbox.

Hate to say it, but that might be the needed solution–after all, this is a workplace, not a gossip circle. Sandra may or may not be contributing to it, but the others need to quit chatting and get back to work.

Actually, you may simply be setting yourself up for a lawsuit. Unless you work in a sweatshop, there is no such thing as not talking to coworkers. You seems to have assumed the problem is with Sandra, and not with her boss.

Next thing you know the boss is proactively choosing all her friends, where she lives, her clothes, etc. all because he “pays her salary.” . Which I doubt, because as a supervisor he’s an employee, just like her.

Oops – made a bad assumption – what if the supervisor is a jealous WOMAN?

What. Boss has every right to ask people to cut chatter to a minimum – his/her workplace, his/her rules. That includes a dress code so he/she has some control over someone’s clothes. By extension, Sandra would need to live near enough to her workplace to show up on time so that sort of denotes that the boss requires her to live within a certain radius of the workplace (though the size of that radius is up to Sandra). And yes, this all WOULD be because he pays her salary.

The only thing that doesn’t line up is friends, but I consider that more a subset of “no unnecessary chatter please”. You should have chosen stuff that’s more ridiculous if you wanted to prove that the boss is crazy…

Seriously Bomba? Unless it’s a sole proprietorship, the boss ain’t paying you, it’s the company. Does your company trust you to live where you choose, or did they choose it for you? By the way, dress codes don’t involve picking out your outfits. If you don’t understand the difference between regulations for the sake of business operations vs. a personal pet peeve by one individual, you can be bought pretty cheaply.

There are workplaces that decide where you live. Not many, but there are certainly workplaces with dormitories. Even on the simplest side, say an RA at a college or a floor supervisor. They have to sleep in the room provided by the college and be available for the residents. Many workplaces (especially retail) say that you must wear a specific polo shirt provided by the company, specific pants, and specific shoes. Even some banks I have been to require specific uniforms with specific patterned neck scarves.

Obviously this workplace is very unlikely to have such things as this as it’s probably an office environment, but the things you mentioned such as clothes, housing, friends, is really not so farfetched and quite a few businesses do hand pick these things for their employees. Many businesses want to friend you on facebook to make sure that you’re not badmouthing to your friends. Or say if you are involved in an altercation where the police are involved they may choose to let you go. There are a great deal many things businesses regulate about their employees lives.

So I still don’t see how your comment about the boss being “crazy” is really all that crazy. What you listed are day to day requirements for many people.

I mean, the boss sounds crazy here, but it’s not going to escalate into what you’re talking about. Even if it did escalate into dress code and living arrangements, it is not all that uncommon.